Necklaces & Nooses Read online

  “Maybe he’s just worried that you haven’t answered,” Anna said. “Do you think you should call him?”

  “No, she shouldn’t call him, Anna. He’ll ask why she hasn’t answered her phone, and then she will either have to lie or tell him the truth. Neither of which is a good idea. Calling him just puts Presley in a bad spot.”

  “But Jared, what if something has broken in the case and he wants to tell her? Maybe we’re making this trip unnecessarily?”

  “Did he leave any voicemails?” I asked.

  “Nope, just hung up.”

  “If it was something important, don’t you think he would have left a message?”

  I pulled off the exit into a Shell station, and then up to a pump so I could also top off the tank. I put twenty in, and then walked into the station’s food mart to grab a Diet Coke and some Twizzlers. Jared was checking out right in front of me. He had Doritos, a couple of Butterfinger candy bars, Swedish Fish, a hot dog with the works, and a forty-four ounce Mountain Dew.

  “Wow! You’re going to be in a junk food coma,” I said.

  “Calories don’t count on road trips. Besides, I’m planning on sharing with you guys. I’m not that much of a pig.” He gave the cashier his credit card. He finished his transaction, and I paid for my snacks, as did Anna. We had enough junk food to last us for a trip to Florida.

  We got back on the highway headed east and for a few miles were quiet. All of us were stuffing our faces with junk and listening to some Eighties station. I had the cruise set and was letting the miles go by, thinking about what I was actually going to say and do, once we got to Crivitz.

  “Has that blue Honda Civic been following us this whole time?” Jared asked.

  “What?” I asked, not hearing all what he had to say.

  “I was asking if you guys noticed that blue Honda Civic behind us? I think that same car has been behind us the whole time we have been on the road.”

  “So? We aren’t the only ones going to Wisconsin,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I swear this car was following us from the beginning, and when we stopped for gas, wouldn’t it have gotten ahead of us?”

  “Now that you mention it, Jared, I think this car stopped when we did,” Anna said. “I remember seeing it parked a couple aisles down from us getting gas.”

  “But still, it could be a coincidence,” I said.

  “What if it’s not?” Jared said.

  “Who could possibly want to follow us?” I said sarcastically to hide my nervousness that there could be a list of people it could be.

  “Maybe Willie had you followed,” Anna said.

  “I doubt he would have someone following me in a Honda Civic.”

  “Are you planning on calling him back?” she asked.

  “Not now. Jared is right, he would ask where I was, and I would either lie or have to tell the truth, and neither one would end well, and I don’t feel like arguing with him.”

  We all got quiet again, more lost in our own thoughts than stuffing our faces. I kept glancing in the rearview mirror, and the Honda was still following us, but was far enough back that I couldn’t tell who was driving. My phone rang again. Willie. It was one o’clock in the morning. Something must be up or he must have ESP, because he had never called me this late. He knew I was usually in bed by then. I let it once again go to voice mail, but if he kept calling I was going to have to answer it eventually.

  “Are we there yet?” Anna interrupted my thoughts with her childlike questions, trying to be funny.

  “Not sure. Jared? You’re the navigator on this trip.”

  “We are getting close. According to Google maps about twenty miles away.”

  “Oh, we’re a lot closer than I thought.”

  “You’ve been going eighty most of the time, Ms. Lead Foot.”

  I smiled. He was right I did have a penchant for speeding and had the tickets to prove it. “Lucky I haven’t passed any cops.”

  “The car is still back there,” Anna said.

  “I noticed that, too,” Jared said. “When we get to our exit for Crivitz, if the car follows us, we’ll know they must be following us intentionally and this isn’t just a coincidence. The odds of someone leaving Chicago the same time as us to end up at Crivitz is too far-fetched to not be on purpose.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, Jared.”

  “Well, get ready to find out, this is our exit coming up.” I turned on my signal and noticed the Civic did the same. “Looks like they’re getting off, too.”

  “What should we do?” asked Anna. “This is creepy.”

  “I say we pull into that gas station over there”—Jared pointed to a BP—“and see if they follow us. If they do, we need to confront them.”

  “Do you think that’s smart?” I asked.

  “There are three of us, and we’ll be in a public place. It’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so.” I pulled into the gas station and watched in my mirror. The Civic was still right behind us. I pulled into the parking lot of the gas station right under a big floodlight. The Civic pulled in on the other side and just sat there, car idling.

  “Well…should we really go over there?” I asked.

  “Yes! C’mon. Both of you. Don’t be such sissies.” Jared got out of the car, and Anna and I followed suit. My stomach was doing flip-flops; I was nervous to see who was following us. We crossed the parking lot and got close to the car, close enough for me to see who was in the driver’s side. I gasped.

  “What, Presley?” Anna asked.

  “I know exactly who that is, but I have no clue as to why she is following us. Or then again, maybe I do.” We reached the car, and I knocked boldly on the window. She rolled the window down reluctantly. “Amy, what the hell are you doing?”

  Jared started saying, “You mean this is the girl you said—”

  I held up my hand to silence him. I would answer his questions later. Right then, I wanted to find out why she was following us. “Amy?”

  She hung her head. “I’m sorry, but I love him, and I have to see and talk to him.

  “Amy, has he expressed any interest in seeing or talking to you?” I asked.

  “No, but I know he wants to; he just doesn’t feel it is appropriate.”

  “What makes you think that? Did he tell you that?”

  “I just know,” she said, breaking into a crying fit again.

  “Amy, listen to me. Your behavior is bordering on the stalkerish. What made you follow us?” This girl had issues. At first when she had told me her story I thought it was an innocent crush, but this was carrying things a bit too far. I was seriously worried.

  “I knew you were running the store, so I figured eventually you would be seeing James to talk about it.”

  “Have you been following me around since the other day when you came into the store?”

  She hung her head sheepishly. This girl was incredible. “I just want to talk to him,” she repeated.

  James would be smart to stay far away from this girl. “Why did you think I would be seeing James once I left the city?” Either she knew more about his whereabouts than I would think or she was just prepared to follow me anywhere I went.

  “I didn’t for sure. I know your family lives south, and James once mentioned they had a place in Wisconsin, so once you kept going on 94 outside the city, I thought maybe you were going to meet James at the cabin.”

  “How did you know about the cabin?”

  “James mentioned it once. He didn’t tell me exactly where it was, just that it was in Wisconsin.”

  James should be thankful he didn’t. What had he been thinking getting mixed up with this girl? I still felt she was harmless, but she definitely was over-the-top obsessed. I almost felt bad that she had fooled herself into thinking James might want to be with her. I didn’t think she killed Solange to be with him, but she sure was entering the realm of harassment and stalking. “Amy, you need to turn around and go home.”

  “Y
ou’re going to meet him, aren’t you?”

  “Amy, that’s not important. But, you need to go home. When someone doesn’t want to see you and you go to great lengths to bother them anyway, that’s not a good thing. Do you want the police to think you killed Solange just to be with James?”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Of course not,” she snapped. “Why would anyone think that?”

  Now she seemed angry. She just didn’t have any clue as to how weird her behavior was. “They would think that because you seem a bit obsessed with James and he doesn’t seem to feel the same way back,” I said. “That maybe you would do whatever it took to be with him. Even, if it meant killing his wife.” I still didn’t think she had murdered Solange, though maybe she was nuttier than I thought. I just wanted to shock her into thinking about what she was doing. “Amy, I know you think you love James, but if he wanted to be with you he would. Don’t waste your time on some guy who isn’t worth it. Find someone who will appreciate you.”

  “But he does love me; I know he does.”

  This girl just didn’t get it. “Amy, you need to turn around now and just go home.” I tried to be firm, but I didn’t think I was getting through to her. She just didn’t seem to be aware of how this looked.

  “No,” she said.

  This was going to be a pain. “Fine, but you’re coming with us.”

  Anna and Jared looked at me. “What are you doing?” Jared asked.

  “I can’t have her wandering around screwing this up. Look at her, she is beyond reason over a stupid guy. We can’t let her make more of an ass of herself.”

  “But what if she did kill Solange?” Anna whispered.

  “I heard that. I didn’t kill anyone,” Amy said. “I promise I didn’t.” She got out of her car and locked it. She obviously wasn’t taking any chances of me changing my mind. “I just need to see James so he understands how much I love him.”

  “You’re right, this poor girl needs a pep talk about how to find the right guy and not stalk them,” Jared said.

  “I’m not stalking him!”

  “I know, he really does love you,” Jared said sarcastically. “Honey, you need a reality check.” He put his arm around her as we walked back to my car.

  “Sure didn’t take much to convince him,” Anna said.

  “Yeah, you know Jared. He likes to play Henry Higgins to the poor Eliza Doolittle’s of the world.” We got back to the car, and Jared pulled up his Google map to give me the rest of the directions. We were only a few miles away, and Lorraine had been right. This was out in the middle of nowhere.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Amy asked.

  Good question. What was the plan? I had no idea. “Jared, this was your idea. What’s our plan?”

  “Simple. Drive to the cabin and confront him.”

  “You think he will just come out and tell me why Sheila has been out to visit him and why he hasn’t returned any of Willie’s calls?”

  “Speaking of Willie, he’s calling again,” Anna said, pointing to my vibrating phone. They all looked at me questioningly.

  “I think this time I better answer. I need to find out what he wants. He wouldn’t keep calling if there weren’t a problem.”

  Anna and Jared shrugged.

  “Hello,” I said, waiting for a pissed off Willie to be on the other end.

  “Why the hell haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  And I wasn’t disappointed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. You have been avoiding my calls for the last few hours.”

  Wow, he was mad. “What makes you think I’ve even been awake? Do you realize what time it is?”

  “I know exactly what time it is, and I know you haven’t been sleeping, unless it’s in the car with Jared and Anna.”

  How the hell did he know that?

  “I stopped by and the doorman told me the three of you had left,” he said, as if reading my mind. “Where are you?”

  Well at least he wasn’t one hundred percent clairvoyant. “I think you’re going to be mad.”

  “I’m already mad. Now, where are you?”

  “Why have you called me so many times?” I thought maybe I could change the subject.

  “If you answered the first time, I wouldn’t have had to call so much. Where are you?”

  I figured I was going to have to tell him because he wasn’t going to stop until I did. I sighed. “Fine, but you can’t be mad. Or I won’t tell you.”

  “Presley, just tell me.”

  “We are on our way to Crivitz.”

  “What?!”

  “I heard that,” Jared whispered. “You want to turn right at the next road.”

  “Presley, what are you thinking?”

  “We want answers and figured the best way to get them is to go directly to the source.”

  “And you’re right, but that’s my job. You could be putting yourself in danger.”

  “Willie, I know you’re angry, but James isn’t a threat to me or anyone else. Even Sheila, who isn’t the nicest person on the block, isn’t someone we need to be afraid of.”

  “Maybe not, but Peter Green is.”

  “I knew he was involved somehow!”

  “Had you answered your phone you would know.” He paused for a few seconds, making me feel guilty, though I wasn’t exactly sure why.

  “Well, are you going to tell me or just hold it against me?”

  “If I didn’t think you might be in danger, I wouldn’t tell you, just to make you wonder.”

  Now he was starting to be less angry; I could tell by his tone and his attempt at being a little playful. “Danger? How am I in danger?”

  “I found a witness that puts Peter close to your building the day before the break-in, and a couple of the doormen remember seeing him loitering around the building that week. I am sure he is the one who ransacked your condo. We also found his prints at Silk from the second break-in. This gets us closer to proving his involvement.”

  “That’s great, but I’m still not sure what this has to do with me driving to talk to James.”

  “Because I think Peter Green is headed there as well. I went back to talk to the bartender at Rookies tonight, and he told me Green had just been in and said he was only stopping in for one beer because he was headed to Wisconsin. The bartender said Green stopped in looking for Steven.”

  “If he was looking for Steven, why do you think he is on his way to see James?”

  “It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “It’s that place right there,” Jared whispered in my ear.

  “Are you there already? Have you been driving while I’ve been telling you not to go there?”

  “Yes,” I said sheepishly. “I understand your concern, but we’re already right here. The only car I can see in the driveway is James’s black Mercedes.”

  “What are you planning on doing exactly? Walking up to his front door, and knocking on it at this time of the night expecting him to be at all happy to see you?”

  “Well, the house isn’t dark. Maybe he is still up. Listen, there are four of us; we’ll be fine. I’m not turning around at this stage.”

  “Presley, I’m only about thirty minutes behind you. Just wait.”

  “You mean you’re on your way here, too?”

  “Of course. As soon as I realized what you guys were up to, I didn’t want to take the chance anything could happen to you.”

  “Okay. We’ll wait,” I said and hung up the phone.

  “So was he mad?” Anna asked.

  “Of course he was mad,” said Jared. “But, how mad was he?”

  “Average mad, but not livid. The amount of mad that I think he will get over in a while.”

  “How did he know where we were going?”

  “The doorman. You heard me tell him we would wait for him. So I guess we wait.” We sat in silence for a while, tired of talking and just plain tired. I was surprised that Amy was keeping quiet. Maybe Jared
had said something that was finally getting through to her. I kept glancing at my phone to check the time, and the minutes were slowly creeping by. Finally it had been about a half hour, so I knew Willie should be getting close. I was glad he was going to be here. This was a very remote location, and it was a little creepy, especially at this time of night, or morning, whatever you considered it. The moon shone through the trees and cast an eerie glow on the cabin. There were lights still on in the cabin, and I thought I had seen someone moving about. I assumed it was James, but couldn’t tell for sure.